


Postcards from a Life in Transition

by Blacksquirrel



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Africa, Character Study, Character of Color, Community: choc_fic, F/M, POV Character of Color, Romance, Travel, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-03
Updated: 2007-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/pseuds/Blacksquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wallace goes to Uganda, Piz goes to New York, and Veronica goes to Quantico. Everyone does some growing up, some growing apart, and some growing together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postcards from a Life in Transition

**Author's Note:**

> I intended to follow the prompt faithfully, and then things took a bit of a left turn, but hopefully this will do. Thanks to my non-fandom mom for the constructive beta and for showing me the world. For more information on the political situation in Uganda and the plight of children abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as child soldiers or child sex slaves, as well as action that can be taken to aid in the region's recovery, check out [Invisible Children](http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php) and the Women' Commission report on how this affects education and the lives of girls and women: [Learning in a War Zone: Education in Northern Uganda](http://www.womenscommission.org/pdf/Ed_Ug.pdf)
> 
> Choc_fic Prompt: 18. Veronica Mars, Wallace/Veronica: AU--most of the story is developed through letter writing/phone calls - they go off to separate schools and missing each other makes them realize their real feelings.
> 
> Warnings: References to war crimes and atrocities, non-graphic sex

Postcards from a Life in Transition

**Distance Changes People**

When Wallace stepped off the plane in Entebbe, Uganda he bought three postcards and a coke while they waited for the bus to arrive. For his mom he chose a picture of the sleek downtown Kampala buildings, and he wrote that he'd arrived safely, reiterated all the benefits of the program, and told her that he loved her. He sent Piz a sepia-toned picture of a man in native dress playing the trumpet in a sea of sand, and he wrote about how long the plane ride had been, how hot the girl in 6A was, and how excited he felt to get down to business. On the back of an image of Lake Victoria with a single figure in the foreground, staring down the camera with a raised fist, Wallace wrote to Veronica a string of trivialities about fighting the good fight and not selling out to the G-man, ending with "All I've seen yet is the airport where a guard dog sniffed me in places I don't want to think about, three separate supervisors looked over my visa before letting me through customs, and my suitcase came off the conveyor belt with a tear as long as my forearm. But I'm a man with a mission - so far, so good. See you in September. Wallace."

The guy who'd sat next to him on the flight squinted over his shoulder, slurping noisily through a straw he'd ostentatiously withdrawn from his bag. (Wallace silently raised his eyebrows to note a number of individually wrapped soaps, sporks, and emery boards keeping the jumbo box of straws company in the guy's suitcase). In the same nasal voice Wallace remembered less than fondly from the last 8 and a half hours en route from London he asked, "Who are you writing to? Did you leave a girl back home?"

"Nah, it's not even like that," Wallace replied with a wistful smile.

Then he gathered his stuff, posted his notes, and trashed the coke can before lining up for the bus and the long stretch of unknown road ahead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wallace had always respected Veronica's passion. Sometimes it scared him, as when, in Veronica's wide wake, the thin line between vengeance and justice lay as broken as the body of Lily Kane. But vengeance was a passion too, and Veronica had it in spades.

Compared to her, Wallace always considered himself the straight-man, cool headed, steady guy. He had his convictions, and he was always there to stand up when it counted, but Veronica was in a different league, where a wild, overwhelming drive burned.

Outside of Gulu Town, they lived in an open-air abandoned mission where they overlooked the reestablishment of farming in the wake of the war, and the war raging on in the squalid camps, as the lights of the city twinkled in the distance. Wallace assisted the teachers, and privately tutored children with ragged holes where there should have been lips and ears, and noses, and children with deadened eyes and leaden countenances who could no longer bear to see what they had been forced to do. He took them through multiplication tables, and geometry, and algebra, and pre-calc, and tried not to think about how many more children were out there, dying in camps or still walking endlessly in search of safety from a monster who may or may not have truly surrendered, because when he thought about those things he sometimes lost sight of why the numbers and formulas mattered at all.

Then, when he walked over to the skeleton of a would-be hospital, he sunk his hands into piles of bolts and sacks of nails, and stacked and restacked the bricks he was learning to make with his own hands, especially the ones that still looked just a bit off at one end, because here was progress. Here was the future raised by inches at a time in the sweat of his efforts and the skill of the people around him. But as he looked off into the distance and saw the steady stream of people arriving from further out into the countryside to reach the nearest clinic, he knew that even their hospital would fall short of the supplies and doctors needed to staunch the ravages of malaria, yellow fever, malnourishment, and AIDS. It was a drop removed from a sea of human misery.

Optimism fled. Duty and conviction clung with tenacity but faded. Passion was growing like a storm inside of him and Wallace welcomed it, because passion would carry him through as he grit his teeth and added one more brick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He met Shelly at the central office on the way from his day job at the school to his evenings and weekends gig at the construction site. She wasn't his usual type, with her drab, shapeless overalls and thick tortoise-shell glasses, but none of them had come here to be fashion plates and her round face lit up out of what had looked like a permanent scowl when he accepted her offer to stay for tea after turning in the classroom requisition form. The corner fan merely re-circulated the same dank air, but they drank steaming mugs of bush tea contentedly, and Wallace found out that Shelly was in the last couple months of a year-long stay to document the political and social situation, as well as the efforts of relief organizations. She had taken a year off after her junior year to "Do something real, you know? Of course you know - you're here" and she volunteered at the office in exchange for full access to the organization's work sites. She pulled absently on her shoulder-length dreadlocks as she talked, in jerky motions that looked painful to Wallace, and she called her tea a "cup of comfort" when she raised it to inhale so deeply that the steam fogged up her glasses. When she asked Wallace how he was handling everything and he said "Aw, you know. I'm fine," with a dismissive shrug and a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, she said, "OK," but pressed her hand into his meaningfully, then changed the subject. They talked about the TV, music, and celebrity gossip that she'd missed over the last eight months, and the laughter that echoed down the hall was edged in desperation, but also relieved and joyful all the same.

When Shelly came a couple weeks later to visit the school where Wallace assisted and tutored he showed her around on his off hour after lunch, anxious and excited as if welcoming an old friend to his home town or showing a new classmate his room. He showed her study enclaves, art studios, and chemistry labs, and pointed out his brightest math students. Then, when they stumbled upon a vacant office, she kissed him, and suddenly she seemed like the solution to every problem that loomed over his days and invaded his dreams. So he poured the rising frustration into her smooth, sturdy frame as they strained against each other, draped over an abandoned desk. He cried when he came, and she touched the tears with her thumb, tilting her head in near disbelief, then she held him close as he clung in the long minutes until his embarrassment outweighed the shocking bliss of closeness. But as he pulled away she cupped his face and told him that she wished she could still cry. Sighing, she kissed his forehead and ran her hands one last wistful time over his biceps, before tucking her breasts, sweetly rounded hips, and beautiful smile back away, as they prepared themselves to rejoin the world.

After she left for the day he felt stunned and raw and broken open. When later he caught his reflection in a mirror he realized that she left his hair sticking up in tufts, and his scalp was sore where she must have pulled it, just as she pulled her own, in stiff jerks. Wallace wondered what he might do when he ran out of tears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The tourist havens they visited on group trips felt increasingly absurd and surreal as time passed and they all began to recognize the luxury of the austere old mission in comparison to the debris and disease of the camps below. They passed posters proclaiming Uganda an "Adventure Tourist's Paradise!" and advertising the wonders of the country's "Untouched Natural Beauty!" yet the great apes seemed to Wallace just another set of soulful eyes pleading with him and asking questions he couldn't answer. Like, "How could this happen?" "When will we be safe?" "Why am I trapped here?" "Will I die like this, displaced from my home, living on scraps tossed by the powerful, with a thousand images of human violence haunting me?"

He saw glorious, amazing things on safari and thought he might like to kayak again back home, but he also wondered how many books, medpacs, or mosquito nets the profits from a single "Ecotourist Dream Package!" might buy.

When he had the chance he bought postcards at the nature preserves and national parks they toured, featuring cute, coy, or regal animals. He preferred the ones that caught him by surprise and made him laugh before he'd recognized the sound as his own. He wrote simply, "Wish you were here, Wallace" and he didn't know if he really meant it, or if he meant "Wish I was there," but he stamped them and sent them to his mom, Piz, and Veronica. When he thought of Veronica what he wanted to write was "I understand now," and "I miss you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Some People Change More than Others**

When Wallace's mother picked him up from the airport the perfection of her hugs felt foreign and set his nerves jangling. She took him to dinner at his favorite place and it was wonderful catching up with his family, eating all the foods he'd been fantasizing about for the last three months. But the little ache that had begun with his mother's embrace blossomed over dinner and by the time they arrived home, after driving past all night diners, superstores, ritzy hotels, and the campus, he had to excuse himself and beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom where all that beautiful, rich, cheap, easy, cloying, food came back up.

In September Piz didn't come back from New York. And for awhile Wallace thought that was going to be ok - Piz and Veronica had made it through a three month separation, so another 8 months could be doable while Piz did a year of broadcasting credits at Columbia - but the notes and cards dwindled sharply and mentioned more and more New York friends and contacts until one day in early October he found Veronica in his dorm room vehemently not crying, curled up on the bed that was supposed to have been for Piz. Wallace took the letter from her clenched hand, then wordlessly crossed the room to order pizza. They spent the night huddled on the floor and bundled in blankets watching sappy movies that gave Veronica an excuse to finally use the tissues Wallace kept close at hand.

Veronica's FBI internship had done wonders for her client base. Hiring someone to investigate highly personal and often dangerous matters who wasn't old enough to drink could be off-putting, but the FBI seal of approval apparently went a long way in offsetting those concerns. So the Mars family shared a shingle and half of the booming PI business in town, each dreaming of a return to a different sort of law enforcement.

In early September Wallace and Veronica investigated a death and a price-fixing scam that led them right back to the Castle. Veronica's plan involved lots of photocopying at the City Hall archives and the painstaking collection of an "evidence dossier" which showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that known Castle members had received clandestine, no-bid government contracts. Wallace's plan was a little different.

"You are not seriously telling me that you plan to fight the people who spread a video of you and Piz getting down, and who put me in a shock collar, with a 'dossier'! You're the girl who cuts off people's credit, pulls confessions from thin air, and has a different brand of blackmail for every situation. Let's mix it up! What did they teach you at Fancy Fed School? How to solve crime without taking the sheen off a manicure in three easy steps?"

Veronica huffed theatrically. "Well, I think it had something to do with discretion, valor, and not ringing the bell of a major crime syndicate to say Boo and run away. Didn't they teach you the one about where the 300 pound gorilla gets to sleep while you were in Africa?"

Suddenly sober, Wallace replied, "Yeah, I learned that one real well."

But not even the FBI could bury Veronica's passion for long. She quickly emerged from under a mountain of procedure, documentation, and even dossiers, to burn just as strongly as before, only now Wallace was done being the one to slow her down. As he stood in front of his closet horrified by the excess of clothes spilling out everywhere (what ever possessed him to buy so damn many pants?), as he watched people throw away food, text books, and even year-old computers ("Chill, Wallace there's a new model!"), as he bristled at the extravagant receptions thrown by the university for returning study abroad students and by international organizations to attract new donors (he shook hands and smiled for the cause, but he couldn't help wondering how many bricks that mouthful of caviar could have bought), a fire grew within him too.

Veronica only asked him once about his newfound dedication to crime fighting. He joked and stalled, but in the end she was Veronica and he wanted to tell her. "It was bad there, Veronica. I mean, it wasn't Chicago ghetto bad, it wasn't Neptune working class bad. This was a whole different level. I can't sit still and not do anything, and if I can't be there doing something, I've gotta do it here." Wallace looked down and tweedled his thumbs and remembered what it had been like when Shelly smoothed away his tears, feeling just as exposed.

When he finally looked up Veronica was troubled, but she met his gaze, shook herself off and smirked, draping an arm across his shoulders. "Ok then, Doctor Watson. It's you and me, all the way."

He nearly choked on the laugh that escaped the tightening of his throat, and he loved her even more than ever in that moment. Swatting playfully at her possessive arm he protested, "Hey! Who said I was going to be Watson?!" and they delved back into the details of the case.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Some Things Remain the Same**

Wallace and Veronica were great partners. When one found a case, the other knew just the person to talk to for something like that. When one pouted, the other pushed ahead. When Wallace crammed for engineering finals, Veronica protested loudly that she was no one's Martha Stewart, but baked him cookies anyway. When Veronica stayed up all night writing a criminology paper, Wallace met her at 3 am with fresh coffee and the library book she needed. When Veronica finally took down Piz's picture, Wallace kissed her, and that turned out to be just what she needed too.


End file.
